Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man Read online

  A place all the kids in town call … the Bush House.

  TWO

  The Bush House isn’t scary because it has a big pointy roof and broken shutters. You see that kind of stuff all the time. And it’s not scary because it’s haunted—it’s not. No, the Bush House is scary because of the bushes. They’re dry and gnarly, and they’ve gotten so big that they’ve kind of swallowed up the house.

  The bushes start clear out by the street and go up about ten feet in the air. Then they kind of arch over the sidewalk and connect with the ones that are growing in the yard. You can be walking down the sidewalk in the middle of the day with the sun beaming away up in the sky, and if you’re crazy enough to walk through that tunnel of bushes instead of crossing over to the other side of the street, well, the sun disappears. And there you are in the dark with your heart thumping and your knees bumping because you just know that the Bush Man’s going to jump out and kill you.

  No one had ever actually seen the Bush Man. No one that I believed, anyway. Grams had told me that the stories about him were exaggerated—that he was probably just a lonesome man lost in his own world, but I never quite believed her, either. No, there’s something very strange about a man who locks himself up in a house like that, and the best thing to do is stay away from him and his bushes.

  The Marsh Monster didn’t happen to agree. And it’s the Marsh Monster who dragged the Bee and the Mummy down Orange Street, through the tunnel, and onto the Bush House walkway. And it’s the Marsh Monster who said, “C’mon! It’ll be fun!”

  So there we were, fighting through the bushes with our flashlights bouncing around all over the place, whispering and shhing our way toward the Bush House, when out of nowhere this skeleton appears and comes charging straight at us. All of a sudden I wasn’t the Monster from the Marsh anymore. I was Sammy Keyes, and my heart was looking for a way out of my body.

  Marissa screamed, but it must have scared the buzz right out of the Bee, because one minute Dot’s up and the next minute she’s on her little stinger in the middle of the walkway. And she’s crawling backward, trying to get away from the skeleton, when she steps on one of her wings and can’t move.

  Then we hear, “Out of the way, out of the way!” and that’s when I realize that the skeleton’s not a skeleton at all, but a trick-or-treater in one of those glow-in-the-dark skeleton suits. And he’s sure had a busy night, because his green-and-white striped pillowcase is just loaded with candy. He swings it right over Dot’s head and kind of dances around her, then disappears down the walkway.

  For a minute, the three of us stare at where he used to be. Then I help Dot up and say, “And Grams thinks I’m too old to go out trick-or-treating.”

  Dot lets out a nervous little laugh, but you can tell—she wants out of there. I look over at Marissa, and, sure enough, she’s doing the McKenze dance. She’s got her toes pointed at each other, and she’s squirming around with her knees together, biting on a fingernail, looking scared to death. She whispers, “I have to go.”

  I grab her by the arm. “Hey, don’t be spooked—it was only a trick-or-treater. C’mon … the door’s right there. We’ll just knock and run, okay?”

  “No, Sammy, I have to go!”

  “Look, Marissa, we’re never going to live it down if people find out we made it halfway up the walkway and—”

  “Sammy … I have to go!”

  I stare at her. “To the bathroom?”

  She nods. “I shouldn’t have had that root beer.”

  I look around and say, “Just go in the bushes.”

  Her eyes practically pop through toilet paper. “In the bushes? No way! Besides, I can’t. I’m all wrapped up and I’ve got on tights and a leotard. I’m going to have to take off everything to go!”

  I can’t help it—I start laughing. I mean, there she is, buried in a mountain of toilet paper with no way to use it. Before you know it, Dot’s laughing too, and Marissa says, “Stop it! It’s not funny!” and then she starts laughing.

  Finally I say, “Look, I’m just going to go up and knock on the door, and then we can go back to Dot’s and you can go to the bathroom, okay?”

  Marissa stops laughing. “You’re going by yourself?”

  I say, “Sure,” because right then I wasn’t feeling too spooked. So we’re surrounded by a few out-of-control bushes—so what?

  I run the rest of the way up the walkway and pound on the Bush House door, wham! wham! wham! like a jack-hammer in church.

  Then the door opens.

  All by itself.

  I should’ve run, but for some reason I just stood there, staring. I’d never even thought about what the inside of the house was like. But there I was, all by myself, standing in the pitch black on the porch, staring inside the Bush House. And inside would’ve been just as black as outside if it hadn’t been for this fire that was burning about halfway down the entry hall.

  Now, this fire isn’t in a fireplace. It’s on the floor next to a skinny table, and it’s burning up a bunch of newspapers. And even though it’s dark inside, I can tell that in a few minutes the table’s going to catch on fire. I lean in a little bit and call, “Hello? Hello? Anybody home?” and of course no one answers.

  I shine my flashlight inside, but the beam just gets swallowed up by the darkness. “Hello? Hey!” I shout. “Anybody home?”

  Nobody answers, so I push the door open all the way, just in case the Bush Man’s waiting behind it, ready to tie me up and roast me on his little open-pit barbecue.

  Then I hear Marissa calling, “Sammy? Sammy! What’s going on?”

  I call back, “Come here! Hurry!” but I don’t wait for her and Dot. I go charging into the house and start stomping on the fire with my high-tops. First I slap it with one foot, then I slap it with the other, and while I’m busy dancing on fire I notice that there’s a candleholder in the middle of the flames.

  Pretty soon the bottoms of my high-tops are melting and my feet are getting toasted, but is that fire giving up? Not a chance. I keep on jumping up and down wishing for a hose or a fire extinguisher, calling out at the top of my lungs, “Fire! Hey, fire!” When Marissa and Dot peek in the front door, I yell, “Get in here and help me!”

  Dot tosses her candy sack down and comes flying in, but Marissa just stands in the doorway doing the McKenze dance. I yell, “Marissa, call the fire department!”

  She says, “But …” and I can tell there’s no way she’s going to wander through the Bush House looking for a telephone or water or anything else.

  Then it hits me. The Marsh Monster sweater. I yank it off and smother the flames with it. First I put it on one side of the fire, then I put it on the other. And it was pretty roasty there for a little while, but before you know it, the smoke’s dying down and the fire’s out.

  I give Dot a high-five, and Marissa shuffles in and whispers, “What happened?”

  “It looks like a candle started the fire.”

  Dot says, “How? There’s nobody here.”

  We bounce our flashlights around for a minute, and then Marissa whispers, “Well then who lit the candle?”

  We look at each other, our eyes getting wider and wider, and Marissa says, “Let’s get out of here!”

  I was planning to follow her right out the door, but something made me look around the corner at the end of the hall. And when my flashlight shone on him, I couldn’t run. I could only scream.

  Now you have to understand—I’m not the screaming kind. The only other time I’ve tried it, nothing came out. But this time it came out, all right—loud and clear. I went charging back around the corner, screaming my face off, and practically plowed Dot over. And all my screaming made Marissa scream, and Marissa’s screaming made Dot scream.

  And the reason I’m screaming is because just around the corner, sitting in a chair with his head twisted around sideways, is Frankenstein. And I’m not talking a Frankenstein mask on a shirt stuffed full of hay, like you might see on someone’s porch. I’m tal
king flesh-and-blood alive.

  And even though my brain knows it can’t really be Frankenstein, my mouth hasn’t quite caught on—it just keeps right on screaming until I clamp a hand over it and shut it up.

  Marissa clamps her own mouth shut, then cries, “What? What’s back there?”

  I know that if I tell her that Frankenstein’s right around the corner with his head screwed on crooked, she’ll freak out and start running, so I say, “Wait right here.”

  She grabs my arm. “Where are you going?”

  I shake off her hand. “I’ve got to check something out, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  My heart’s going crazy inside my chest, and I can feel the rest of me getting shaky, but I make myself walk around the corner. I shine my flashlight on him, move a few steps closer, and then just stand there, looking.

  Frank doesn’t budge. He just sits there slouched sideways in the chair. Then I notice the ropes. There’s one tying his hands together, and there’s one wrapping his ankles to the legs of the chair. So I take a few steps closer, thinking that if he is alive, he sure isn’t going to jump up and nab me.

  Through the holes in the mask I can see hair—kinky gray and black hair. It’s one of those heavy-duty masks that get all steamed up when you wear them; if you’ve ever put one on sideways, well, you know you can’t breathe like that for very long.

  So I reach forward, and I’m about to take off the mask when somebody screams.

  I jump about ten feet in the air, and as I’m coming down I look over and see Marissa. She says, “What is it?”

  I put my heart back in my chest and say, “I think it’s the Bush Man … and I think he’s dead.”

  Marissa looks like she’s about to run, but Dot comes inching in, whispering, “He’s dead?”

  Marissa follows her, kind of hiding behind Dot’s wing, and while they’re getting closer I reach out and pull Frankenstein’s face off.

  It’s a man all right, and he is looking pretty dead. His head flops forward, and there’s blood running from one side of his head down his cheek and into his beard. I put my hand under his nose to see if he’s breathing, but I can’t feel anything. Then I poke around his neck for a pulse. “He’s not dead!”

  Dot whispers, “He’s not?”

  I shake my head. “I can feel his heartbeat.”

  I look around for something to blot the blood off of his face, and then I remember Marissa. I start yanking toilet paper off of one arm, and Dot starts yanking it off of the other. We blot a bit and figure out that the blood’s coming from a gigantic bump above his ear.

  As soon as we stop the bleeding, I check his breathing again. And I’m holding my breath, waiting for some air to come out of him when I notice that his chest is going up and down. Not very fast or far, but up and down. And I can’t figure out why I can’t feel any air, when all of a sudden he moves a little bit and we hear this wheezing sound.

  I jumped. All of us did. I mean, this was the Bush Man. It had to be. And that wheezing sound wasn’t coming from his mouth. I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from, but it was pretty spooky-sounding, let me tell you. So there he is, wheezing and twitching, and what does he see when he opens his eyes?

  A hairy green girl, a decomposing mummy, and a five-foot bee.

  And who screams?

  We do.

  And we’re turning around to run, but just then the weirdest sound comes out of him—it’s not a gurgle, and it’s not a growl; it’s something kind of in between.

  Marissa yanks on my arm. “Come on! Sammy, come on!”

  But something’s telling me to stay put and listen. I say, “Shh! Shh!” and yank back.

  Then we hear it again, that gurgling growl. Only this time it’s louder, and this time I know—it’s his voice.

  And what he’s saying is “Help … me.”

  THREE

  Marissa stops yanking and whispers, “What did he say?”

  I whisper back, “I think he said, ‘Help me.’ ” I grope along the wall for a light switch, but when I find it and flip it up, nothing happens. So I shine my flashlight on the man and call out, “Are you okay?”

  He just holds out his wrists to me.

  I move forward, but Marissa grabs me and whispers, “You’re not going to untie him, are you?”

  “Marissa, he’s hurt! Someone tied him up!”

  “Maybe he was torturing them, and they just got away!”

  Now from everything I’d ever heard about the Bush Man, this was not such a crazy thought. But there he was with his hands out, looking so helpless that I couldn’t just leave him. I went over, got the knot out of the rope around his hands, and then ran back to Marissa and Dot and watched while he untied his legs.

  When he’s got the ropes off, I ask him, “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

  He touches the spot on his head where he’s been clobbered, and after a minute he shakes his head. Then he pulls a pencil and a little pad of paper out of his shirt pocket and scribbles something on it. He tosses it over to me, then goes back to feeling the bump on his head while we read:

  GO NEXT-DOOR TO 625—NOT 629—AND CALL THE POLICE. PLEASE. P.S. DID YOU SEE THE SKELETON MAN?

  I think about this a second. “You don’t have a phone?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Or electricity?”

  He shakes his head again, and then that gurgling growl comes out of him. “Did … you … see … him?”

  “He practically ran us over on your walkway. Is he the one who knocked you out?”

  He nods, so I say, “Did he rob you?”

  He shrugs, then pats his hip pocket and nods again. Then all of a sudden he starts sniffing the air. “Fire?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s out.”

  He crunches up his brow, then points to the pad. “Go … call.”

  I nod, and I’m about to leave when I decide to ask, “You’re the Bush Man, aren’t you?”

  He looks at me kind of funny, then shakes his head and shrugs like he’s never heard of the Bush Man. “The … name’s … LeBard.”

  Well I’m not going to stand there and explain to him how he may think his name’s LeBard, but everyone else in town calls him the Bush Man. I’m just going to go next-door and tell the police to come to the Bush House. They’ll show up a lot faster than if I tell them 627 Orange Street.

  So off I go, only Marissa grabs my arm and whispers, “You’re not leaving us here alone, are you?”

  I look around. “Do you want to go call?”

  She nods real fast. “Yes!”

  Trouble is, she takes Dot with her. So I’m left all alone in this dark house with the Bush Man, and part of me’s scared, but part of me’s curious. I mean, there are all these questions that I’m dying to ask, like Why’s the power off? and Why don’t you have a phone? and Why do you have so many bushes? But with him sitting there holding his head, well, they all seemed kind of stupid.

  And I probably would’ve just stood there minding my own business while he rubbed his head, if there hadn’t been this one question that kept popping up. Finally it just popped out. “What happened to your voice?”

  He sits there looking at me a minute, then motions for the pad.

  I toss it to him and pretty soon it comes flying back with TRACHEOTOMY/LARYNGECTOMY written on it.

  I study the words, trying to figure out what they mean. Then I look at him and shake my head. “What’s that?”

  He pulls back his shirt collar and shows me his neck.

  I tried not to stare but I couldn’t help it, because right there at the base of his neck was a hole. It wasn’t really that gross or anything—it was just a small hole. It’s just not something you expect to see when you look at a person’s neck.

  I guess he got tired of me staring because after a minute he closes his collar and gurgles, “You … smoke?”

  I just stand there like an idiot, shaking my head.

  He nods. “Good.”

  I w
atch while he gets up and shuffles around the room lighting candles. And when the place is lit up a bit, I feel like I’m in some ancient museum of books. Old books. Books that look like they’d fall apart in your hands if you took them off the shelves. Books that are brown or dark green or black, with faded lettering on the side. Scary books.

  I’m not talking one or two. I’m talking the whole room. Every inch of every wall. Well, there was a window that was covered up by a thick brown curtain, and there was a fireplace, but other than that every inch contained books.

  He finishes lighting three candles at the far end of the room, then he walks over to a table next to the fireplace and stops. And he stands there for a long time, just staring. Finally he turns around, and even though no sound comes out of his mouth, you can tell—he’s cussing.

  Seeing the Bush Man with his wild hair and bumped-up head, holding a candle that’s dripping wax while he’s cussing away, well, I was ready to run. But right then there’s a pounding on the front door and a voice calls in, “Hello? Mr. LeBard? Police … Hello? These girls tell us you’re in some sort of trouble. May we come in?”

  The Bush Man takes a candle and shuffles off to the front door. And I’m standing there in the middle of all these flickering candles and books, thinking that the room looks like some kind of vampire heaven, when Marissa and Dot come racing into the room.

  Marissa stands right in front of me, jumping up and down, whispering, “You’ll never guess who’s here!”

  I say, “Oh no” because, looking at her, I know exactly who must have come to take the report. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  She grins. “Nuh-uh, and he’s in a real good mood.”

  I roll my eyes. “I don’t believe this.” Then I notice that Dot’s still the Bee, but except for her tights and leotard Marissa is Marissa—not the Mummy. I ask, “Did you use the bushes?”